Ask HN: What helpdesk do you use for incoming support requests?

[aaronpk]

A lot of startups just forward support@example.com to their personal email addresses and go with that. At some point, that invariably stops being a viable solution.

I'm curious what helpdesk software or service people start using after an email inbox stops working as a support mechanism.

[aquark]

I switched to ZenDesk when it became too much to manage requests in GMail.

It works fine, but I noticed a drop off in user engagement which I think was due to the more 'formal' looking way support tickets appeared. When I was just responding to email I would invariably get back a positive acknowledgement if the problem was solved, now a good proportion of tickets never receive a reply from the user.

I could follow up with them ... but that takes more time too!

I'm think of switching to SupportFu who were mentioned here a while ago ... the end user experience feels just like a person-to-person email exchange rather than dealing with a ticketing system.

[marquis]

Install something like http://osticket.com on a small VPS and use gmail as the mail server, so you have a backup. You'll get a similar experience to a paid app. Upgrade to zendesk or something once you get a lot more users and you need to be able to track requests, or fork osticket and add your own tracking.

[terramauthe]

Regarding startup / bootstrap helpdesk tools, I don't have any experience.

At my work, we use HEAT and I hate it so much. Judging by the way it works, I think it would be terrible for any kind of startup to use (IE: not cloud).

However, I am curious to see what people have to say about various cloud based solutions.

Hope this question gets traction.

[calbear81]

We use Zendesk at Room 77. Allows us to keep track of what issues our customers and users are facing, categorize them, and systematically deal with them. We also have some remote support members and having a centralized tools helps keep mix-ups to a minimum.

[philip1209]

I usually set up the free tier of Uservoice. It's not bad - my biggest complaint is the batch handling. When I send out an email campaign, I get a lot of 'out of office' notices, and deleting those one at a time is a pain.

[skrish]

We use Freshdesk. They have a startup plan that we applied for. Took about 15-20 mins to setup and has been on autopilot so far.

[nhangen]

I am absolutely in love with Intercom.io